For many people, “Habit” is a word associated with negative things, like snacking, smoking or some other ‘bad habit’. But actually, a habit is just a behaviour that your brain has learned is something you do often enough to be worth getting really good at doing quickly. Our brains like to be efficient and so when something becomes a habit it gets taken care of by a different, less energy intensive part of our brain. Cool, right?
Understanding habits, what they are and how our brain makes and keeps them is a really powerful skill. In this article we will learn some of the science behind habits, and how we can use this knowledge to our advantage.
We will focus on how to use this knowledge to form new, healthy habits that support us in our goals and living a healthy and happy life.
Understanding the ‘Habit Loop’
Like with most things regarding our brains - it all starts with a ‘cue’. A cue is the thought or thing that kicks off a chain of events in our mind that lead to an ‘action’.
An example of this for a ‘bad habit’ might be noticing the cupboard in the kitchen which you know has chocolate in it. We’ll stick with this bad habit example for now because it’s easy to understand (and most of us can relate to it!)
The thing is, our brains are always busy attributing meaning to the things around us. In the case of habits, the meaning is to take action automatically. However, for this to happen, the brain also needs to associate the action with a desire.
In our example above, it’s easy to see how this works for chocolate - it tastes great and gives you an immediate boost of pleasure when you eat it. This pleasure ‘reward’ creates the ‘desire’ to repeat the action in the future. Do it enough times and a new habit forms - every time you see that chocolate drawer, you eat a chocolate.
So, from this we can understand why ‘bad habits’ are quick to form; and hard to stop. They are almost always about things that are easy to do and give us a quick burst of pleasure.
Hopefully you can see how once we understand this system we can use it to break bad habits and create new ones. If we make things we want to become a new habit easy and desirable, while making old bad habits harder and less desirable we can use the system to our advantage.
The Brain's Role in Habit Formation
Now that we have an understanding of the basic structure of a habit, let’s dig a bit deeper into what’s going on inside our heads when these automatic behaviours take root.
Imagine your brain as a large open field with long tall grass. Every time we want to do something we have to take a journey through this field. The very first time we walk a new route, it requires great effort as we consciously monitor where we’re headed and with each step form a new pathway in the tall grass.
The next time we take that route, we still need to think about where to go but it’s a bit easier as the last path we took is still somewhat visible in the grass. Over time, and with many journeys we wear that grass down into a clear footpath that we can easily walk with very little effort and it gets us there much quicker.
This is similar to how neural pathways work in our brain. Just like this well-trodden path in the field, our brains create pathways that become stronger and more efficient with repetition. Each time we do something our brain sends electrical signals along a journey. When we’re learning something new, those pathways are narrow and take conscious effort to keep them on track. This guidance comes from a part of our “thinking” brain called the per-frontal cortex.
The more times we do the same thing, in the same way, these pathways begin to widen and strengthen, making it easier for the signals to pass quickly. The part of our brain involved in this process is called the basal ganglia and it loves dopamine - a chemical that our brain releases when an action results in an enjoyable or positive reward.
So, you can see that at first, doing something new takes effort and discipline. But, over time, our brains change shape and make it easier for us. If we can design the new habit to have a positive association then the dopamine from this helps to supercharge the process.
Consistency & Reward: The Keys to Habit Formation
It’s clear to see that this process doesn’t happen overnight. On average it takes around 66 days for a new habit to form, which is just under 10 weeks. However, it can take as little as 18 days, less than 3 weeks!
The keys are consistency and reward. Doing something often and linking it to something that gives an immediate sense of achievement or pleasure helps build the new neural pathways more quickly.
It can be hard to stick to this, especially when you’re just getting started. Our My Weekly Habit Tracking journal is designed to help with exactly this. It creates a simple to follow system for choosing the right cues, incorporating rewards and tracking your progress to ensure consistency.
Each week you can write down the habits you plan to work on and satisfyingly tick them off in your book. The added benefit is, it’s not an app so it doesn’t break your flow with a stream of social media notifications!
Habit Stacking and Breaking Bad Habits
There’s another barrier to this, which we haven’t yet tackled - remembering to do your new habits! If you forget to do them, even with the best will in the world you won’t create those much desired new pathways.
That’s where cues become important. As we have said, cues are the thing that kick off a new habit. In our earlier example, seeing the treats cupboard in the kitchen led to wanting to eat chocolate and then inevitably taking a snack with you.
With our new understanding of the process in the brain we can sneakily use this to our advantage! Through a technique known as ‘habit stacking’ we can borrow a cue from an established habit, good or bad. So in the example of the treat cupboard, we add a new action to the impulse to eat chocolate which is to also write down 3 positive things while we eat the snack. Over time we will want to do this just as automatically when we walk past that cupboard. Then later, we can work on not eating the snack! Another example would be somebody who bites their nails using the cue of biting to use hand moisturiser. We hijack a bad habit and use it to our advantage.
It doesn’t have to be a bad habit either. We all have lots of good habits as part of our daily routine. How about adding 10 squats to your tooth brushing routine? This one is great because it tones up your muscles and entertains everybody who walks past the bathroom. Or perhaps you could drink a glass of water every time you go to make a coffee?
Making it Easier for Yourself
Ultimately deciding to work on habits is about making your life easier and more fulfilling in the long run. Sure, there’s some extra effort up front but quite quickly you can have automatic, low effort helpful behaviours as a part of your daily routine. If you want an extra assist then grab one of our My Weekly Habit Tracking journals to guide you through the process. Happy 'healthy habit' creation!
